The Charterhouse of Parma (18 page)

The Count showed her. “You will regret,” he added, “the brilliant uniform. But in that regard, I don’t know what I can do.”

After a month, which the Duchess had required in order to reflect, she consented with a sign to the Minister’s sage views.

“To ride haughtily on an English horse through some big city,” the Count repeated, “or to assume a condition which in no way contradicts his birth—I see no middle ground. Unfortunately, a gentleman can become neither a physician nor a lawyer, and the age belongs to lawyers.

“Remember, Madame,” the Count repeated, “that you are offering your nephew, in the streets of Milan, the fate enjoyed by the young men his age who pass for the most fortunate. Once his pardon is obtained, you will give him fifteen, twenty, thirty thousand francs; the amount matters little to you; neither you nor I make any claim to saving money.”

The Duchess was sensitive to questions of glory; she did not want Fabrizio to be simply a wastrel; she returned to her lover’s plan.

“Observe,” the Count told her, “that I make no claim of turning Fabrizio into an exemplary priest, such as you see all around you. No; he is a nobleman first and foremost; he may remain quite ignorant if he chooses, and will become no less of a Bishop, and an Archbishop, if the Prince continues to regard me as a man useful to him.

“If your orders deign to change my proposal into an immutable decree,” the Count added, “Parma must not see your protégé as a man living on modest means. His style of life will be regarded as shocking if he is seen to be a simple priest; he must appear in Parma only with
a suitable establishment and
purple stockings
.
^*
Then everyone will realize that your nephew is destined to be a Bishop, and no one will be shocked.

“If you believe me in this, you will send Fabrizio to seminary, and he will spend three years in Naples. During his vacations from the Ecclesiastical Academy, he may visit Paris and London if he likes, but he must never show his face in Parma.”

On hearing this sentence, something like a shudder passed through the Duchess. She sent a courier to her nephew, and arranged to meet him at Piacenza. Need it be said that this courier was the bearer of all the necessary moneys and passports?

Being the first to arrive at Piacenza, Fabrizio hastened to meet the Duchess when she appeared, and embraced her with transports which made her dissolve into tears. She was glad that the Count was not there; since their affair had begun, this was the first time she had experienced this sensation.

Fabrizio was deeply touched, and then distressed by the plans the Duchess had made for him; his hope had always been that, once his Waterloo business was settled, he would end by being a soldier. One thing struck the Duchess and further increased her romantic opinion of her nephew: he absolutely refused any thought of leading a café life in one of the great cities of Italy.

“Can’t you see yourself on the
Corso
in Florence or Naples,” said the Duchess, “with thoroughbred English horses! A carriage for the evening, a handsome apartment, and so on.”

She delicately insisted on the description of this vulgar felicity, which she found Fabrizio rejecting with disdain. “The boy is a hero,” she mused.

“And after ten years of this pleasant life, what will I have accomplished?” asked Fabrizio. “What will have I have become? A young man
of a certain age
who must give way to the first good-looking youth who turns up in society, also mounted on an English horse.”

Fabrizio at first utterly rejected the notion of entering the priesthood;
he spoke of going to New York, of becoming a citizen, a soldier in the Republic of America.

“What a mistake you’re making! There will be no war for you to wage, and you’ll fall back into café life, only without elegance, without music, without love affairs,” the Duchess responded. “Believe me, for you as for me, an American life would be a sad business.” She explained to him the cult of the god dollar, and the respect that must be paid to merchants and artisans in the street, who by their votes determine everything. They returned to the question of the Church.

“Before you fly into a passion,” said the Duchess, “understand what it is that the Count wants you to do: there is no question of being a more or less exemplary and virtuous little priest like your Abbé Blanès. Remember what your uncles the Archbishops of Parma once were—read over the accounts of their lives in the Supplement to your
Genealogy
. Above all, it is important for a man bearing your name to be a great lord, noble, generous, protector of justice, destined from the first to find himself at the head of his order … and throughout his life committing only one dishonorable action, and that a very useful one.”

“So all my illusions are shattered,” exclaimed Fabrizio, sighing deeply. “It is a cruel sacrifice! I admit I had not contemplated this horror to enthusiasm and intelligence, even when wielded to their advantage, which will henceforth prevail among absolute sovereigns.”

“Just think that a proclamation, a heartfelt whim casts a man of enthusiasm into the faction contrary to the one he has served his whole life long!”

“I an enthusiast!” repeated Fabrizio. “A strange accusation! I cannot even be in love!”

“What do you mean?” exclaimed the Duchess.

“When I have the honor to pay court to a beautiful woman, even well born, and religious to boot, I never think of her except when she is in front of me.”

This avowal made a strange impression on the Duchess.

“I ask you for a month,” Fabrizio continued, “to take my leave of Madame C—— in Novara and, what is still more difficult, of the castles in Spain of my whole life. I shall write to my mother, who will be kind enough to visit me in Belgirate, on the Piedmont side of Lake
Maggiore, and thirty-one days from now, I shall be in Parma, incognito.”

“Anything but that!” exclaimed the Duchess. She did not want Count Mosca to see her speaking to Fabrizio.

This same pair saw each other once again at Piacenza; this time the Duchess was greatly agitated; a storm had broken at court; the Marchesa Raversi’s faction was about to prevail; it was possible that Count Mosca would be replaced by General Fabio Conti, leader of what in Parma was called the Liberal party. Except for the name of the rival growing in the Prince’s favor, the Duchess reported everything to Fabrizio. Once more she discussed the possibilities of his future, even with the prospect of lacking the Count’s omnipotent protection.

“I shall be spending three years at the Ecclesiastical Academy in Naples!” exclaimed Fabrizio. “But since I must be a young gentleman first and foremost, and since you are not obliging me to lead the severe existence of a virtuous seminarian, this stay in Naples holds no terrors for me, such a life will certainly be as agreeable as that at Romagnano; the respectable folk there are beginning to find me something of a Jacobin. In my exile I have discovered that I know nothing, not even Latin, not even how to spell! I intended to start my education anew in Novara; in Naples I shall gladly study theology, a complex subject, I understand.”

The Duchess was enchanted. “If we are driven out of Parma,” she told him, “we shall come to see you in Naples. But since you accept the purple stockings for the time being, the Count, who knows the situation of Italy at the present time, has given me a suggestion for you. Believe what you are taught or not,
but never offer any objection
. Imagine that you are being taught the rules of a game of whist; what objections could you possibly have to the rules of whist? I told the Count that you were a believer, and he is pleased with the fact; it is useful in this world and in the next. But if you are a believer, do not fall into the vulgarity of speaking with horror of Voltaire, Diderot, and all those harebrained Frenchmen who have paved the way to a government of Two Chambers. Let these names rarely come to your lips, but when you must, speak of these gentlemen with a calm irony—they have long been refuted, and their attacks are no longer of any importance. Believe
blindly everything you are told at the Academy. Realize that there are people keeping careful account of your slightest objections; you will be forgiven some minor amorous intrigue, if it is properly conducted, but not a doubt; now age suppresses intrigue and increases doubt. Act on this principle in the tribunal of Penitence. You will have a letter of recommendation to a Bishop who is the factotum of the Cardinal-Archbishop of Naples; to him only may you confess your escapade in France, and your presence, on June 18, in the environs of Waterloo. For the rest, greatly abridge—diminish this adventure, acknowledge it only so you cannot be reproached for having concealed it; you were so young at the time!

“The Count’s second suggestion is this: If there should occur to you some brilliant reasoning, a victorious retort which would change the course of the conversation, do not yield to the temptation to shine, hold your tongue; intelligent people will see your wit in your eyes, there will be plenty of time to be witty when you are a Bishop.”

Fabrizio entered Naples with a modest carriage and four servants, good Milanese, which his aunt had sent him. After a year’s study, no one described him as a man of wit; he was regarded as a diligent and generous nobleman, perhaps something of a libertine.

This year, rather an entertaining one for Fabrizio, had been terrible for the Duchess. The Count had been three or four times within an inch of losing everything; the Prince, more fearful than ever because he was ill that year, believed that by dismissing the Count he would be rid of the odium of the executions performed before the Count had entered his Ministry. Rassi was the cherished favorite who would be retained at all costs. The dangers incurred by the Count gained him the Duchess’s passionate attachment; she no longer brooded over Fabrizio. In order to put a good face on their possible retirement, it was given out that the air in Parma, somewhat humid as a matter of fact, like the air in all of Lombardy, was rather injurious to his health. Finally, after certain intervals of disgrace, which for the Count, as Prime Minister, meant not seeing his master for as long as twenty days at a time, Mosca prevailed; he had General Fabio Conti, the so-called Liberal, appointed Governor of the Citadel, in which Rassi’s Liberal judges were imprisoned. “If Conti shows indulgence toward his prisoners,”
Mosca observed to his mistress, “he will be disgraced as a Jacobin whose political ideas have caused the neglect of his duties as a general; if he shows himself to be severe and pitiless, and it strikes me that he will incline to this position, he thereby ceases to be the leader of his own faction and alienates all the families who have some member in the citadel. This poor fellow knows how to put on a respectful face at the Prince’s approach; if need be he will change his uniform four times a day; he can argue a question of etiquette, but his is not a mind capable of following the arduous path by which alone he can save himself; and in any case, I am there.”

The day after General Fabio Conti was appointed, ending the ministerial crisis, it was learned that Parma would have an ultramonarchist newspaper.

“How many disputes this paper will engender!” exclaimed the Duchess.

“This paper, whose idea is perhaps my masterpiece,” replied the Count with a laugh, “I shall gradually allow, in spite of myself, to pass into the hands of the raging
ultras
. I have had splendid salaries attached to the editorial positions. Everyone will seek such offices; this business will occupy us a month or two, and the dangers I have just run will soon be forgotten. The weighty figures of P—— and D—— are already on the list.”

“But such a paper will be disgustingly silly!”

“I rely on it,” retorted the Count. “The Prince will read it every morning and admire the doctrines of its founder, myself. As for the details, he will approve or be shocked; of the hours he devotes to work, two will be taken up in this fashion. The paper will get into difficulties, but by the time serious complaints are registered, in eight or ten months, it will be entirely in the hands of the fanatical
ultras
. This will be the faction that will annoy me when I must answer for them, and it will be I who raises objections to the paper; as it turns out, I prefer a hundred wretched absurdities to one hanged man. Who recalls a piece of nonsense two years after the publication of the official paper? Better than having the sons and the family of a hanged man vowing a hatred that will last as long as I do and that may well shorten my life.”

The Duchess, always passionate about something, always active, never idle, had sharper wits than the whole court of Parma; but she lacked the patience and impassivity requisite to success in scheming. Still, she had managed to follow devotedly the interests of the various coteries; she was even beginning to enjoy a certain amount of personal credit with the Prince. The Crown Princess, Clara-Paolina, surrounded by honors but imprisoned within the most outmoded etiquette, regarded herself as the unhappiest of women. The Duchess Sanseverina paid court to her, and undertook to prove to her that she was nowhere near so unhappy. It must be remarked here that the Prince saw his wife only at dinner; this repast lasted some thirty minutes, and the Prince spent whole weeks without addressing a word to Clara-Paolina. The Duchess attempted to change all that; she entertained the Prince, all the more frequently since she had managed to retain all her independence. Even had she wished to, she could never have avoided wounding the crowd of fools that swarmed around the court. It was this utter lack of skill on her part which made her loathed by the ordinary courtiers, all those Counts and Marchesi who enjoy an income of about five thousand a year. She realized this unfortunate fact after the first few days, and concerned herself exclusively with pleasing her sovereign and his wife, the latter exerting an absolute dominion over the Crown Prince. The Duchess managed to entertain the Sovereign, and benefited from the extreme attention he granted her slightest words in order to set the hostile courtiers in a ridiculous light. Since the foolish actions Rassi had made him perform, and the foolish actions of noble blood which are irreparable, the Prince was occasionally terrified and frequently bored, which had brought him to the point of melancholy desire; he realized that he was never entertained, and became grim when he supposed that others were having a good time; the appearance of happiness enraged him. “We must conceal our affections,” the Duchess told her friend; and she let the Prince guess that she was now only passably taken with the Count, estimable a man though he was.